As if lazy men aren’t bad enough, now women have to worry about Lazicum Spermatoza, aka, lazy sperm. In Swimming Upstream Slowly: A Novel. The main character Sasha Salter, producer of a children’s television show goes to see Dr. Benson for a routine visit because she is feeling a little under the weather. Since it’s been two years since she’s last had sex the last thing she expects is to find out that she is pregnant.
Initially Dr. Benson is skeptical, the last thing she believes is that Sasha, a hip, successful twenty something must be getting some from somewhere. But no, Sasha insists, she isn’t. After a hysterical crying jag during her second visit to Dr. Benson the dear old doctor is ready to send her for psychiatric help, but then she remembers a colleague who is undertaking an unconventional research project. In steps Dr. Ruesmeth the somewhat weird UCLA researcher explains his expertise in the world of male fertility. Despite Sasha fragile frame of mind he explains excitedly about a condition known as Lazicum Spermatozoa, a lazy sperm that remains dormant while relaxing in a comfortable biological home until the sperm finally decides to fertilize her egg.
Sasha sits in his office both dazed and fascinated and she listens to him go on and on referring to her as little more than an insect in a Petri dish their for his examination before she finally reacts when he gets to the heart of his concern; finding the father. Things were bad enough before, but now Sasha is expected to go back and possibly maybe ask all of the men that she has slept with to give the Dr. Nut Job a sample of their what knots so he can see who is or isn’t the Proud owner of the lazy fella who decided to wake up and impregnate Sasha. And…she is supposed to be doing all of these while being shadowed by an overzealous reporter who is doing a story on 20 something movies and shakers.
Luckily for Sasha, she has the support of close friends who are willing to help construct “the List”. You know “the List”—right here is where you are supposed to imagine yourself doing the little bunny ear thing—we all have one. It’s that list that we keep in our heads of all the people we’ve ever slept with. Sasha brave soul that she is decides to track all of the people on her list down and ask them for a sample of their DNA so that she can maybe possibly find out who is the father of the child that she might decide to carry to term.
I agree with Alan Alda, bestselling author of Never Have Your Dog Stuffed whole heartedly, “Melissa Clark starts with an idea so convincingly scary it’s amazing she can play it out in such a funny, moving, and sexy way. But, boy, does she ever.”
Melissa Clark is the author or coauthor of sixteen cookbooks, including The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen with Peter Berley, which won awards from both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She has written about food in dozens of magazines and newspapers. She lives in Brooklyn. You can purchase Swimming Upstream Slowly: A Novel, at your local bookseller.